musical musings from the frozen north:
torontopia, mont royal city and kawartha kottages

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Shamir

When I was 12 I was obsessed
with Yazoo and Bronski Beat. Those voices—what were they? Why did they sound
like that? Where did they come from? (Britain, it turns out.) The rest of my life,
I’ve been drawn to voices and personalities who confound expectations of gender
and genre, who frighten the fearful and broaden possibilities, voices who sound
like no one else: k.d. lang, Bjork, Martin Tielli, Nina Simone, et al. In the
summer of 2014, I discovered another one: a 19-year-old kid from Las Vegas named
Shamir Bailey.

Shamir’s debut EP, Northtown,
drew heavily—and apparently unintentionally (see below)—from early ’90s house
music, like that of the recently departed Frankie Knuckles. The Pitchfork
review that tipped me to it referenced Camille, Prince’s androgynous
alter-ego circa Sign O the Times. The EP closed with a solo acoustic cover of a
song by Canadian country singer Lindi Ortega. I was pretty sure Shamir was
going to push all the right buttons for me. He did.

His follow-up single, “On the
Regular,” got picked up in a couple of ads and boasted a colourful video. He
then signed to XL, who released his debut full-length, Ratchet, this spring.
The album wasn’t the knockout punch I was hoping for, but at least half of it
was as good or better than Northtown, and songs like “Demon” demonstrated his
continuing growth as a songwriter. (There was nothing left to improve about his
singing: it was and is thrilling.)

I somehow convinced Maclean’s to let me write about my
latest obsession; the story is here.

Sadly, Shamir’s only Toronto
date until now was an appearance at Bestival in June. He’s finally headlining a
local show, on Friday, Nov. 20 at the Mod Club. He plays the night before, Nov.
19, at the Fairmount Theatre in Montreal. Then he flies to Mexico City for the
final date of a tour that’s lasted six months straight, it seems.

The following interview,
conducted over the phone in May 2015, was neither condensed nor edited.

When I read about you talking
about your favourite bands, you talk about Austra, Tegan and Sara, Mac DeMarco,
and Alvvays and Lindi Ortega. Is there a theme there?

I love Canadian music, it’s
ridiculous! Alexz Johnson, FeFe Dobson, the Pettit Project, which was a really
old Canadian band. And Lindi Ortega is amazing, she’s definitely one of my
faves. I’ve never met her, only on the Internet, but hopefully I’ll make it to
Nashville soon.

I know you’ve also covered
Miranda Lambert and you have roots in country music. How long did you spend
thinking country music was something you might do? You had a lo-fi pop band, Anorexia, before this current project.
What were your forays into country like?

It was something that was
always around me when I was younger. I really decided to write country music
when I was 13 or 14. I’d discovered Taylor Swift, and I had a friend from Texas
who listened to a lot of country and she put me onto a lot of it. We’d listen
to it together. I had an acoustic guitar, so it was natural.

One of my favourite songs on
the new record is “Demon”…

Oh my goodness, that’s
everyone’s favourite! Literally, every single person has said that.

Is there a country demo of
that song? I could see that lending itself to a different arrangement.

Yeah, actually. There is, and
a video I did with Yours Truly, where
they followed me around Vegas, like a mini-doc, way before I even recorded it.
It started as an acoustic song.

Speaking of Canadians and
country music and people who subvert what country music can be, I think of k.d.
lang. People have this perception of who she is now, but when she first came
out she shook Nashville to its knees. They did not know what to make of this
woman who existed outside of gender.

Totally. That’s how I felt
initially when I decided to do country, but it was getting too hard, and a lot
of people think country music has to be one way with the same structure. I
found people like Miranda Lambert and Lindi Ortega because they both do
something different with country. They have their own style. That’s where I got
fed up with it. That’s when I started Anorexia. I was 16 and almost tired of
music in general, but I still wanted to make it. I just wanted to make it with
pure expression.

I know you didn’t listen to a
lot of electronic music when you made the demos. What was it like for you when [producer]
Nick Sylvester or whoever it was played stuff that sounded similar to yours
from 20 years ago?

I knew that there would be
some similarity because I was producing all my stuff on an old drum machine,
that literally was probably made and produced in the 1990s. All the sounds are
very vintage-sounding. I was blown away by how much the structure of some of
the songs I was making was so much like house music. I had no idea. I’d heard
of house music, but never really knew what it was, musically. I’d never
listened to dance music, outside of pop—that was the only electronic thing I
listened to. It was very funny to see that what I thought was different had already
been done, but also I think what sets it apart is that it’s completely
uninspired but still have its own sound and feel to it. I feel like I’m doing
something very old and with a throwback feel, but what makes it new is the fact
that I don’t listen to this type of music. It’s completely inspired by other
kinds of music: the sound palette, the lyrics, the melodies.

Who gave you that drum
machine?

I got it from my stepdad’s
godbrother. He was a producer, and he used it to make music and ran it through
a program like Fruity Loops or something. Then he wasn’t using it anymore, so I
said, “I’ll take it! This is so cool! I can physically tap these buttons to
make the tracks.” I’m more of a hands-on person. I’m a musician, so I’d much
rather play an instrument, as opposed to programming a bunch of settings and
adding things by clicking. That’s just how I am. That’s also how Nick Sylvester
works, too. This whole album is all analog instruments. He uses drum machines,
old synths and handmade analog synth boxes that he pitch-shifts. The only thing
we used a computer for was to record the instruments.

The first line on the first
record is, “I’m sitting on the couch feeling alone.” You’ve described yourself
as an introvert, and yet I read reports of you hugging literally hundreds of
people at any given show?

Yeah!

How many people did you hug
in Austin, at SXSW? Like, a rough number?

I haven’t had time to think
about it! I decided I’d keep hugging people until I fade into oblivion.
Seriously, that’s how it works. At my show in L.A., it was this little show for
maybe 200, 300 people. I feel like I hugged literally everyone in that venue.
It was two hours after I got off stage, and I was still hugging people and
signing things and taking pictures. I’m an introvert in a way, where if I had
the option of going out or staying in my room, I’ll stay in my room. But when I
am out, I enjoy other people’s company. I know how to be social—I just choose
not to be social. Also, if I’m out and there are good and positive vibes, I
definitely want my shows to be a party. I don’t want all these people who paid
money to see me play these songs to just feel grateful that they got to see
these songs. No. I want them to have a whole experience, as opposed to just
coming here and seeing me sing. I also want to break the whole barrier down of,
“I’m an artist, look up to me, I’m a high priestess or something.” I don’t like
that. I want to hop in the crowd and hug everyone and get to know everyone.
It’s one of my favourite things about performing live.

Who comes to see Shamir? Who
is drawn to your music?

That’s what I love about my
audience. It ranges from so far. From what I see the most, it’s mostly teenage
girls and older gay men. (laughs) It is so funny, to see that together in the
crowd. Pretty much everything in between, too, which is super cool. Once I went
to some music-streaming service or whatever and they showed me the statistics
for me, and my male to female ratio was 50/50, which is super rare. I was super
excited about that.

We can guess so much about a
person from their singing voice: race, gender, regional accents. Your voice
doesn’t conform to what we expect: we can’t identify what it is, but we can
identify that this is someone who knows what it’s like to be different, that
anyone who feels on the outside is drawn to it immediately.

I definitely want to be the
voice for those people who can’t fall into a category or box. Those
in-betweeners. I’ve always been one my whole life, and I’ve learned to accept
it and realize that I’m never going to be able to blend in with the crowd. I
have this really weird voice and really weird face. I feel like my job as a
musician is to show other people that if they don’t belong or fit in that it’s
okay, and they should embrace what makes them unique.

A lot of people don’t figure
that out for a long time, if ever, and they carry a lot of pain trying to
conform. I’ve heard you say that if you just own it, just wear it on your
sleeve, that people will respect that.

A lot of people’s problem
too, with wanting to conform, is they conform so they can fit in and have
company. What made it easy for me to not conform is that I’m an introvert and
I’ve never had a fear of not having friends. I’m like, I don’t care! Music is
such a big part of me, that as long as I had music, I didn’t care.

Your aunt knew a lot of musicians.
Were those people making music in the house, or you just knew them
peripherally, and that that lifestyle existed?

My earliest experience from
like kindergarten to second grade was my mom, her twin sister, me and her twin
sister’s son, we all lived together in a house. It was super chill. My mom was
really young. She had me at 19. She was very free flow. They were both really
young with really young kids. They would have a lot of musicians and older
people over all the time, having parties. The weird thing is that now that I
think about it, people would always say, “Oh Shamir, why are you so mature,”
even when I was growing up I had problems relating to and communicating to kids
my age. Now I realize it’s because when I was growing up there were so many
adults around; I learned how to communicate with adults before I did with kids
my own age. Most of her friends were musicians, singers, rappers and producers,
to help her put music to her lyrics. She was a lyricist. She liked to write
poetry, but she doesn’t play or sing anything. She’d do that in her free time,
as a hobby. She had a huge piano in our room, and a bass guitar and a computer
recording setup. We’d have recording sessions in our living room and she’d let
me sit in. I just loved the whole process of making music, it was so intriguing
to me. It was what planted the seed in my head.

That maturity extends to your
musical taste, too. It sounds like you grew up listening to a lot of Nina
Simone, among other things. But Nina Simone is so heavy on so many levels: so
beautiful and joyous but also so fiery and socially conscious, so much range to
what she does.

Do you know how scary it is
for a seven- or eight-year-old to listen to her version of “Pirate Jenny”? That song
used to scare me, but I loved it.

You’re not just listening to
“My Baby Just Cares For Me.” There’s an obvious parallel between yourself and
her in terms of unusual timbre. I’m fascinated with countertenors and
contraltos. Have you heard Klaus
Nomi before?

No, I haven’t.

Have you been with vocal
teachers who can identify your range? What have you learned about your voice in
the last year?

When I was in high school, I
wanted to join a men’s choir. The choir teacher there was really, really
horrible. He was convinced I was singing in a falsetto the whole time, and
forced me to sing in a low register. I do have a low register, but it’s so, so
weak, and it’s hard for me to project. But I did it for a week, and I
completely lost my voice. It was so scary. So I thought, okay, forget him, he
obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about, I’m going to sing in a way
that’s comfortable for me. I actually just came from a voice lesson, two days
ago, and it was my second voice lesson ever. My teacher told me I’m a high
tenor; that’s just how my voice is. The technique he’s shown me is amazing.
I’ve always had this voice; it’s the only one I’ve ever had. Some people think
this is stylistically that I’ve chosen to do, and then they meet me and say,
“Oh, your speaking voice is exactly the same!”

What do you think that choir
teacher’s problem was, just his problem with construction of gender?

Pretty much! And it was a
men’s choir, so it sounded weird. Then I auditioned for West Side Story in high school and got in. I was a Shark. They were
all picking on me, saying, “It sounds like there’s a girl in the Sharks!” So I
dropped out and thought, okay, whatever: obviously my voice has to stand alone.

Even in the last 12 months
there’s been such an explosion of conversation about gender and how it does or
doesn’t define us, and I feel like I’ve heard more about trans rights in the
last year than I have in my whole life. I know you’re 20, but do you feel
things are different now than they even were five years ago? Do you feel the
conversation has shifted?

Yes, it’s more different now
than ever. People are becoming less and less afraid to stand up for who they
are. They’re more vocal. Back then, people felt ashamed and didn’t say
anything, and now you have someone like Bruce Jenner, who’s from an older
generation. Now younger generations like mine are not afraid. We feel we have
the space to do that. Which is super cool, but people think I’m an advocate for
it because of who I am so naturally. I tried to fall on one side of the binary,
but I naturally could not. This is something I couldn’t even attempt to hide. I
definite think it’s cool that it’s me being myself, 100 per cent true to myself,
and that helps others, and there’s a whole other movement—my friend Hari Nef,
she’s a transgender runway model. She seems to be in most everything I’m in.
Gender, to me, is not something that’s just one thing. I’m glad that message is
being taken more seriously in the last couple of years.

The #1 record in America
right now is Alabama Shakes, and that woman’s voice is not a womanly voice.

Yeah, she’s tough! I love her
ways. She’s crazy amazing. She’s reminiscent of Janis Joplin, who really threw
people off. It’s great to have another voice like that, and in the mainstream.

I know everything happened
very fast for you: you sent demos to Nick Sylvester at Godmode and he flew you
out to New York to record with him. I didn’t think his label was big enough to
fly unknown people around the country!

Um, no, it’s not! He
definitely took a huge risk, financially and just in general. He really,
really, really believed in me.

What was that first trip
like? Had you been to New York before?

No, I hadn’t. I definitely
wasn’t one of those people who had a New York state of mind. I never thought,
“Oh, I want to move to New York one day.” I was trying to move to Arkansas at
the time.

Really? Why?

Because I wanted to live more
simply. I’d just graduated from high school, wasn’t really doing anything,
wasn’t going to go to college, I was just working. And then someone offered me
a free trip to New York, so of course I’m going to take it.

Were you worried at all?

He lives in Williamsburg in
Brooklyn. I flew out there and took a cab to Williamsburg. He had a day job
then, and he was stuck at his office and told me he’d be a little late. So he
told me to just tool around, maybe get something to eat. I was wandering around
Williamsburg with all these bad thoughts in my head, like, “Oh my goodness,
what if this is all fake and he’s going to take me somewhere and murder me?”
All the stuff I should have thought of beforehand. I tell people, “Yeah, I met
this random stranger on email and we talked on the phone once and then I flew
out to New York to record with him—and he didn’t murder me!” Then I met him and
he’s super sweet and cool, and we banged out two songs in that first weekend.
Then I got back home, and a month later I wake up to find out one of those
songs is on Pitchfork as “best new track.” It’s like, “What happened?” I was
going about my normal life. But it’s been crazy ever since.